9526102 Kiremidjian The rapid assessment of the state of critical and conventional civil infrastructures, in normal operation as well as in natural hazard conditions is essential. In this project an intelligent system will be developed for monitoring the state of structures that utilizes advanced sensing, microprocessing, wireless transmission, and damage diagnostic methods. The monitoring system will evaluate the global damage level as well as the specific location, type, and degree of local damage to structural elements and connections. The system will be designed to periodically test and assess the condition of a structure under normal operating conditions; and will evaluate its state following extreme loads such as those caused by hurricanes, earthquakes, or blasts. Application of the monitoring system with wireless communications capabilities to both existing and newly built structures will be investigated. The research effort will focus primarily on the design and development of the distributed sensor units, site master processor, and the efficient wireless communication system ofthe damage monitoring system. Combinations of sensors will be utilized to enable assessment of the overall damage state of the structure and to identify specific locations and types of deterioration. Advanced computational algorithms will be developed to enable efficient and reliable estimation of the state of the structure. ***
